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Bill Christine

Bill Christine, whose first Kentucky Derby was in 1968 (like everybody else, he waited several years to find out if the courts would uphold the DQ of Dancer's Image), spent 24 years covering horse racing for the Los Angeles Times. He covered every Triple Crown race for the Times from 1982 through 2005, and also reported on the first 22 runnings of the Breeders' Cup. Recent stories by Bill have appeared in The Blood-Horse, Post Time USA, the California Thoroughbred and Paddock magazine.

Bill has won two Eclipse Awards for turf writing, five Red Smith Awards for best Kentucky Derby stories, two David Woods Awards for best Preakness stories and the National Turf Writers' Association's Walter Haight Award and Pimlico's Old Hilltop Award for career contributions to racing. He was part of the Los Angeles Times team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for its coverage of the Northridge earthquake the year before.

Bill came to the Times from the Thoroughbred Racing Associations, where he was assistant to the executive vice president. Before that, he covered a variety of sports for newspapers in East St. Louis, Baltimore, Louisville, Pittsburgh and Chicago, including a stint as sports editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He wrote Roberto!, a biography of the Hall of Fame baseball player Roberto Clemente, in 1972. His first job in racing was in the front office of the old Commodore Downs track in Erie, Pa.

Bill, who lives in Redondo Beach, California, is working on a history of Bay Meadows. Contact: bill.christine@yahoo.com.

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Thursday, January 31, 2008

After the Breeders' Cup charged $50 for general admission on the second day of its two-day mudbath at Monmouth Park, I wondered what could be done for an encore, price-wise, when the event lands at Santa Anita for the fourth time this fall.

A $75 ticket would register nicely on the gouge-o-meter. But why stop there? Just round off the cheapest ticket in the joint to a not-so-cheap $100. That way, fans wouldn't have the nuisance of making change.

Sherwood Chillingworth, executive vice president of the Oak Tree Racing Assn., which as Santa Anita's tenant is the host for the event, talked about his discussions with the Breeders' Cup regarding ticket pricing.

"Since this is the 25th Breeders' Cup, it was suggested that we charge $25--on both Friday and Saturday," Chillingworth said with a frown.

I suppose the Breeders' Cup could then bray about having cut the price in half for the $2 bettor. Remember the line spoken by the newspaper reporter played by Sally Field in the movie "Absence of Malice"? "It's not the truth, but it's accurate," she said.

Pointing out that a $25 general admission for the 25th Breeders' Cup might be a hard sell despite its symmetry, Chillingworth said that this is what he said to the Breeders' Cup: "If this were the 100th running, would you be charging them $100?"

I asked Chillingworth what the public paid for general admission the last time the Breeders' Cup was held at Santa Anita.

"Five dollars," he said.

That was only five years ago.

"What I proposed," Chillingworth said, "was that we charge $10 on the Friday, and $15 on Saturday. That would give them the magic number 25 that they seem to be looking for. It would cost a guy $25 for both days."

The three Breeders' Cups at Santa Anita--1986, 1993 and 2003--have averaged 58,644 in attendance. The 69,155 who turned out in 1986 is still the biggest crowd, but for the six runnings at Churchill Downs, in Breeders' Cup history. Other than Churchill, Santa Anita has the highest average among tracks who have hosted more than one cup.

"The whole idea, as far as I'm concerned, is still to get as many people into the place as possible," Chillingworth said.

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